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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320819">Before My History Ends</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/downjune/pseuds/downjune'>downjune</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Terminator (Movies), Terminator - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Movie: Terminator: Dark Fate, Spoilers, Time Loop, Time Travel, Time Travelling Lesbians</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:54:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,648</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320819</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/downjune/pseuds/downjune</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I can do better,</i> Grace thought.<i> I will do better.</i> Dani let out a low, tortured sound as she leaned on the shiv and drove it into Grace’s middle, but she didn’t shut her eyes, didn’t hide from what she had to do. At least not until she kissed Grace on the mouth. The two things Grace carried with her into the dark were the taste of salt and the dusty rose color of Dani’s eyelids. Her last thought—<i>That was different.</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Grace Harper/Dani Ramos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>168</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello, shiny new fandom! I've been hot for this new Terminator movie ever since I saw the first bts shots of Mackenzie Davis in that f&amp;*king tank top. I finally saw the movie, and here we are. If you don't believe me, <a href="https://mini-oddity.tumblr.com/post/190831122974/scumlow-i-died-a-lot-to-live-a-little-with-you">look at this gifset.</a></p><p>Lots of spoilers for the movie. Lots of timey wimey stuff. I hope you like this! And I'll post the next two chapters shortly.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I wanted more time. That’s all I—there’s never enough time.” Grace couldn’t feel her legs, and the press of the metal shard against the synthetic skin of her abdomen was only a dull annoyance. How many times had she been stabbed through the gut now? Her organs had all been wrapped up and tucked away for safekeeping, to make room for the micro-reactor that was going to win this. </p><p>“Me too,” Dani answered, tears tracking through the soot and grit on her cheeks. She touched Grace’s jaw, her brow, thumbed across her cheek. “Thank you for protecting me.”</p><p><i>I can do better</i>, Grace thought. <i>I will do better</i>. Dani let out a low, tortured sound as she leaned on the shiv and drove it into Grace’s middle, but she didn’t shut her eyes, didn’t hide from what she had to do. At least not until she kissed Grace on the mouth. The two things Grace carried with her into the dark were the taste of salt and the dusty rose color of Dani’s eyelids. Her last thought—<i>That was different</i>.</p><p>*</p><p>“I volunteer for the augmentations. I volunteer.”</p><p>“Grace, the risks—”</p><p>“I know the risks, and I volunteer.”</p><p>*</p><p>The clumsiness of her body frustrated her. It always had. All knees and elbows, her mom used to say. But as she re-trained it to fight and to shoot, she found herself wondering why she couldn’t skip ahead. Why she had to relearn the weight distribution of her reinforced skeleton, relearn balance with the changes to her inner ear. Why the metabolic crash <i>always</i> took her by surprise. The slowness of everything dragged on her, a cosmic injustice.</p><p>She was an awkward teenager all over again, coltish and emotional, while her commander—while Dani—was hard and distant in a way that felt wrong. Dani looked at her with something dead in her eyes. Something hopeless, even as Grace got stronger. As Grace got stronger, it got worse.</p><p>“I’m making progress,” she insisted as she shook and burned through another crash. </p><p>Dani shot her up with the cocktail to rebalance her systems and nodded. “I can see that.” She examined Grace closely, for long enough that the newly healed scars on her face made her squirm with self-consciousness. She’d never had the time or opportunity to consider herself beautiful. That concept died on Judgment Day ten years ago. Which meant it had been nine since Daniella Ramos pulled her out of a pile of rubble and put a gun in her hand. In this moment, with Dani’s eyes on her—squarely on her, no one else—Grace felt like a freak. Something too-large and alien with her gangly augmented limbs and her scars. </p><p>“I didn’t want this for you,” Dani finally said, gaze dropping. “Not this time.”</p><p>“What do you mean?” Grace’s pulse fluttered wildly, irregularly. If she weren’t already lying down, her head would be swimming. “What did you want for me?”</p><p>Dani’s mouth tightened. She’d just cut her hair off this year, and Grace was still getting used to it. Very few of them had kept their hair long. At first it had felt important. Now, it was such an obvious vanity, Grace would have thought Dani’d do it sooner. </p><p>She would never in a million years reach out to touch it, feel the paint-brush ends against her augmented skin, or card her fingers through it. She thought about it, though. </p><p>“I’ve known you since you were sixteen years old,” Dani finally said. “What do you think I want for you?” Without waiting for an answer, though, she pushed to her feet and left Grace alone on her cot.</p><p>*</p><p>“Everything I’ve done has led me to this moment,” Grace said fiercely, a righteous fire in her belly. “I’ve trained for this better than anyone. I’m the <i>only</i> one for this mission.” </p><p>Dani squeezed her eyes shut tight and for one terrible moment, Grace thought her commander might finally break down and weep, but when she opened them, they were dark and dry as ever. With that resignation inside. Flat and dead.</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“I can keep you safe. Keep her safe. Don’t you trust me?”</p><p>Dani gave a complicated shrug and shake of her head. “Of course, I trust you.” Without meeting Grace’s eyes, she reached up and hooked her by the back of the neck, dragged her down until her brow pressed firmly to Grace’s. “And I don’t want you to go,” she murmured, just for Grace to hear.</p><p>The machines had traveled back to 2022 to take Dani out before she raised an army to fight back. Honestly, Grace was surprised they hadn’t attempted it before this.</p><p>Her mind caught on that thought, even as Dani drew back and pressed a hard kiss to her temple. Grace’s brain was still her own, but her augmented senses collected and stored more data to enhance her memory, and she felt something like an echo or a whisper. Had Legion attempted this before? <i>Was</i> she doing this for the future of humanity or did she have some other motive? </p><p>What was this eagerness she felt to get back to the past, to find Dani there?</p><p>Dani released her before Grace could think to return the embrace. “I’m proud of you,” she said. “And I’m going to miss you.”</p><p>Then she stepped back and let the techs swarm in to prepare Grace for the jump. It was the last time Dani touched her.</p><p>*</p><p>She found Dani in the factory in 2022 like gravity had tilted her there, even without her commander’s detailed description. Her body knew what to do to beat the Rev-9 back long enough so that Dani and her brother Diego could escape. It was like gravity, too, grabbing hold of Dani and curling her body in and away from the threat. They were both so <i>alive</i>, Grace almost smiled at the feel of her vibrating with fear in her arms.</p><p>Grace pushed Diego into the truck first, Dani after, and shoved into the driver’s seat so that they were all three crammed flush together on the bench seat, and thought, <i>You’re coming with us this time</i>. She understood what that meant in a brilliant flash of déjà vu as she leaped into the back of the truck while Diego floored it down the highway. She hurled four pieces of steel rebar through the windshield of the construction vehicle bearing down on them, pinning the Rev-9 inside. </p><p>When it phased apart and left its skeleton in the driver’s seat, Grace snatched the piece of rebar it hurled back at her out of the air instead of letting it crash through to lodge in the cab of the truck. </p><p>When they wrecked, Diego didn’t impale himself on it. Though Grace was uncertain why she thought he would. She hauled them both out of the cab before the Rev-9 could ram them. </p><p>“Swear to me you will take her and run when I tell you to,” she gritted to Diego. </p><p>Dani shook her head, one hand clamped in her brother’s, the other around Grace’s forearm. “We’re not leaving you. We can’t fight that thing without you.” She regarded Grace with confusing intensity, and the loop of knowing her so well and not at all threw Grace off. For one precious second, all of time narrowed to Dani’s grip on her. <i>We’re not leaving you. </i></p><p>Her senses screamed at her, and she snatched Dani away as another piece of that fucking rebar whistled through the air.</p><p>Diego made a terrible, punched, wet sound, and Dani’s lungs inflated sharply against the cage of Grace’s arms the moment before she screamed.</p><p>Letting him die in that truck would have been a kindness. Though Grace wasn’t sure how she knew that. She didn’t have the time to think about it either with the Rev-9 running at them. There was never enough time.</p><p>*</p><p>She couldn’t remember a worse metabolic crash, but Dani got her to a pharmacy without Grace having to say a word. She took the gun from the back of Grace’s pants and held up the joint with shaking hands and voice while Grace stumbled into the back to steel the drugs she needed. </p><p>She still dropped like a stone before she made it out of the shop, but Dani’s clammy hands on her skin followed her under. The murmur of her voice vibrated through Grace’s bones and kept her tethered, even as she drifted.</p><p>Another familiar voice joined hers, rougher and lower. Yeah, Sarah Connor was (still) a bitch.</p><p>*</p><p>The night they’d crossed into Texas, Karl the T-800 kept watch. Grace should have taken what rest she could while she could, but she field-stripped and cleaned Sarah’s rifle at the kitchen table instead. That in itself was restful. She heard Dani coming up behind her, knew the rhythm of her tread and breath as well as her own, and didn’t turn around. </p><p>So it wasn’t Dani’s approach that startled her—it was the hands gentle on her waist that forced her spine straight on a sharp inhale. She whipped around on the bench as Dani stepped back with her hands raised, a smile tugging at her mouth. The image jarred so severely with the memory of her in that red sweatshirt, dropping to her knees with a border patrol rifle to her head, Grace had to give herself a good shake to get rid of it. She tried to return Dani’s smile. </p><p>It was a welcome sight. Dani had smiled so rarely since Grace had met her after Judgment Day—she could recall most of them.</p><p>“What are you doing up?” Grace asked softly. “You should sleep while you can.” </p><p>Dani was dressed in some of Alycea’s pajamas. The t-shirt was thin, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. Which wasn’t a thing Grace could keep herself from noticing.</p><p>Her nose wrinkled. “Sarah snores.”</p><p>“I know.” Grace twitched a smile. “I can hear from down here.” Once Grace had started bunking with her fellow survivors instead of running from them, sleeping through everyone else’s safe, boring noises had been one of the first things she’d learned. When they bunked together, Dani had slept silent as the dead. More than once Grace had held a knife blade over her mouth just to see the fog of her breath.</p><p>Dani exhaled a short laugh now. “Anyway, I was going to ask you the same thing. I woke up and you were gone. I got nervous.”</p><p>Grace cut her gaze back to the dismantled rifle. “Oh, I—sorry.” She shifted to straddle the bench seat and didn’t bother with an excuse as Dani dropped down to sit opposite her. Their knees bumped easily together, Dani’s touch just as casual and, Grace thought, deliberate on her thigh. Her senses lit up, a shiver pinging up her spine like an old pinball machine. </p><p>“I wanted to say before,” Dani said, gaze lowered to where she touched Grace’s thigh, “but you were flying a helicopter, and it was loud…when you said I can’t afford to do stupid shit like risk my life for Sarah….”</p><p>“Or anyone else. Right.” Grace tore her eyes from Dani’s hand on her leg.</p><p>“I just think—you can’t know if I’m that important. Anybody could step up. They would if something happened to me.”</p><p>Grace shook her head, hesitated a moment, then covered Dani’s hand with her own. “Legion thought it would be easier to travel back through time to find you and kill you rather than take you out in the present—your future. They think you’re plenty special. You’re the heart of the human resistance.”</p><p>She shook her head. “No.”</p><p>“Dani, you don’t give birth to some man who’s going to lead us. Judgment day is only a few years out—trust me, we’re not all following around some middle-schooler.”</p><p>“But Sarah said—”</p><p>“Sarah needs to quit projecting her own bullshit onto you at least long enough to do some basic math. I’m from the future—I would know.” </p><p>Dani exhaled a sharp sound that she quickly covered with her hand. She didn’t stay smiling. “I don’t want to be a movement. That’s stupid and dangerous. No one person can do that. It’s too much.”</p><p> “You’re right.” Grace could only shrug. “It’s not fair. But, Dani, you’re not alone in it.”</p><p>“Are you there with me?” Dani looked up at her, and Grace’s heart wasn’t just in her chest anymore. Her blood surged, but so did the micro-reactor, sensory awareness crackling wildly all up and down her body. <i>This</i> was why she’d come back. </p><p>She was a livewire of sensation, so much that when Dani leaned closer to grip her arms, Grace thought she would jolt her with the current fizzing through her skin. “Every step of the way, yes,” she managed. </p><p>“Are you—are we, I mean.” Dani shook her head, a flush creeping up her neck. Grace stared at it. She could pretend she didn’t know what Dani was asking. But there wasn’t enough time for that.</p><p>“You and I… it’s the most important relationship of my life. I know who I am because of you. But no. We’re not.”</p><p>Dani wet her lips and dipped her chin in a short nod. “I see.”</p><p>Then Grace cleared her throat and said either the bravest or stupidest thing of her life. Beyond even, <i>I volunteer</i>. “You’re not her, though. Not really. I came back—I’m here for you, Dani.”</p><p>The truth of it slotted into place, an almost-physical sensation. The insertion of an external drive containing absolutely critical information she’d known before and forgotten.</p><p>“How can that be?” Dani asked. “If I’m not her yet, then you barely know me.”</p><p>Grace couldn’t locate the source of her knowing, but given their time constraints, neither could she devote the space to tracking it down. “I don’t know exactly—except that I do.” </p><p>Dani studied her face, reached her fingers up to trace the faded scars around her orbital bone. The diamond shape their knees made had shrunk as Dani edged closer. “Me too,” she murmured and rose up just enough to press a brief, gentle kiss to Grace’s mouth. “From the second you grabbed me in the factory—I knew the sound of your voice. It was like I recognized you.”</p><p>Grace tipped her head back as Dani straightened from the bench. She placed her hand on Dani’s hip and when she shifted forward, slid her grip down the back of her thigh to guide Dani into her lap. Exhaling unsteadily, Dani sank down, resting her arms carefully across Grace’s shoulders. </p><p>“We don’t have a lot of time,” Grace said. She could hardly breathe against the weight of what she could feel coming. </p><p>“Better make the most of it, then.”</p><p>“I agree.” Grace tightened her grip on the backs of Dani’s thighs and easily picked her up as she stood. Dani’s knees tightened around her waist, and Grace couldn’t help the smile that cracked open her tight expression. “Where should we go?” She, Dani, and Sarah had all camped out in the kid’s room, but like hell were they heading back there. </p><p>Dani tipped her chin over Grace’s shoulder. “Couch in the den?”</p><p>“Yes.” She stepped away from the bench and reflexively tightened her grip on Dani’s thighs when she tried to get down. “Let me,” Grace said. Though what the fuck Dani was supposed to <i>let</i> her do, she didn’t know yet.</p><p>They tumbled down onto the over-soft couch in Karl’s den, and Grace was struck with the momentary odd flash of an image—a terminator shopping for den furniture—before she had Dani under her, drawing her in closer with her legs. Grace had lost count over the years of the number of times she’d covered Dani’s body with her own. </p><p>They felt nothing like this. </p><p>Dani’s hands skated up her sides, dragging her shirt along, and Grace exhaled sharply at the intimacy of it. Holding herself up on her knees, she tipped her head down against Dani’s, squeezed Dani’s thighs as she arched up, and had to shut her eyes against the flood of sensation.</p><p>“What does it feel like when you’re augmented?” Dani asked breathlessly.</p><p>“What?” </p><p>“You know. Being touched like this. Sex with somebody else.” Dani’s fingers tripped up the bumps of Grace’s spine, and she shuddered so hard, she had to brace against the arm of the couch so she didn’t collapse onto her.</p><p>“I haven’t done this with anybody else,” she answered before she could think what that would signify. At Dani’s hesitation, she blurted, “I mean since my modifications.” She closed her eyes and winced internally at the lie, but went with it now that she’d said it. </p><p>With Grace’s shirt rucked up to her armpits, Dani’s thumbs pressed along the undersides of her breasts. She’d never developed much, but with the enhancements, her body burned up every bit of spare fat it had and then some. Still, the pad of Dani’s thumb across her nipple crackled through her nervous system. It didn’t seem possible that she was built for this, too, and not just death. That her heightened senses could also do this was, in this moment, the greatest gift she’d received from them.</p><p>“Is it good?” Dani asked.</p><p>Grace managed a nod before Dani took her hand from the arm of the couch by her head and spread it wide across her stomach. “Touch me too,” she said. Jerking her head in another nod, Grace slid her palm up Dani’s torso, beneath her shirt to cup her breast. She caught Dani’s nipple between the rough knuckles of her middle two fingers and hiccupped something like a giddy laugh at just how gorgeous her life could be. </p><p>Her eyes stung a bit at the unfairness of it all—that she’d only realized this before the likely end of it.</p><p>Not wanting to hesitate for another moment, she ducked down and got her mouth where her hand had been. Dani arched, so Grace wrapped her arm beneath the hollow of her low back and ground down to meet her. </p><p>“Yes,” Dani gasped, one hand scrambling between them for the button and zipper to Grace’s jeans. She’d buried the other in Grace’s hair, and now she tugged gently in time with the rhythm they’d started. Grace sucked at her nipple and made a rough sound as Dani got a hand between her legs, skin to skin. She was too short to reach well, so Grace instinctively shifted her kiss from Dani’s breast to her mouth. Within reach now, Dani’s fingers pressed cleverly against her and inside her, and that rough sound went raw.</p><p>“Is this okay?” Dani asked, her hand going still. Before she could draw away, though, Grace clamped her legs shut around it.</p><p>“Don’t stop. Please,” she said. </p><p>Dani nodded, slid her fingers back into place, and tipped her chin up in clear invitation. Grace bent down to kiss her again, but the feel of Dani’s hand on her, touching her in a way no one ever had, coaxing new sensation from the body Grace had thought she understood, robbed her of all intent. She could only react. </p><p>This was dangerous, some part of her warned. If anything came for them now, Dani was as good as dead. But Karl and Sarah would alert them and—</p><p>Dani scratched her fingers gently against Grace’s scalp with one hand and rocked her other inside and up, and the twin pressure—one light and one steady—seemed to shut down all higher brain function. Grace cried out, and it would have been torture, except Dani had hold of her with her knees still clamped to her sides and now at least three fingers inside her. </p><p>Sex was not a thing Grace’d had much time or inclination to explore. Difficult to say if she’d been less horny than the average teenager or if the black terror of the apocalypse and all-out global warfare had robbed her of a sex drive. Her modifications had sterilized her—a relief more than anything—and the team of techs and surgeons who’d taken her apart and put her back together had said nothing about pleasure. </p><p>Other survivors fucked like it was going out of style, so Grace had seen and heard plenty over the years, but beyond a few exploratory touches alone in her sleeping bag, trying to keep silent with others so close around her, all Grace’s experience had come from her dreams. She had the most wonderful dreams. </p><p>So she did recognize the onset of orgasm; she just hadn’t known she could have them awake. This, with Dani’s mouth pressed to her throat and the heel of her palm rubbing steadily against her clit, sent her reeling, at once far beyond the barriers of her own body and somehow deeper beneath her own skin. She could swear even time opened up, memory and dream blending until she and Dani had been and would always be this, right here.</p><p>It was a lot. Grace was a fucking wreck when she finally collapsed on top her. Knowing how heavy she was, though, she did her best to push Dani further up the couch and to shift herself down between her spread legs. She dragged Dani’s sweats with her. </p><p>“Can I go down on you?” she slurred, smoothing her fingers over the dark patch of hair between Dani’s legs.</p><p>“Yeah,” she answered eagerly. “Shit, that was so intense.”</p><p>“You’re telling me,” Grace mumbled just before she slid her tongue between the folds of Dani’s skin and tasted her and <i>moaned</i>. Tangy and sweet and sharp and better than she’d dreamed. She inhaled deeply and just kept herself from moaning again. “God, you smell so good,” she said.</p><p>Her fingers back in Grace’s hair, Dani huffed a short laugh. “Really?”</p><p>“Or maybe it’s just where I’m from there’s no reliable running water, so everyone here smells good in comparison.”</p><p>Dani laughed again and then hissed as Grace licked and sucked more firmly. “Fuck,” she said and spread her knees a little wider. Grace burned hot and bright and quick during high-stress situations, but for this kind of thing, she had the stamina of a fucking terminator. The vast majority of the world’s porn had been wiped out, but she’d seen a few rescued videos, and had known Dani for what felt like lifetimes. She could learn entire weapons systems in minutes; she could damn well learn oral sex in an evening.</p><p>*</p><p>Grace made a mess of them both as well as Karl’s couch, and feeling Dani’s internal muscles shiver against her mouth tugged another orgasm from deep inside her as she rocked against her own hand. She moaned against Dani’s flesh as Dani’s fingers tightened in her hair, and the entire world seemed to vibrate with them as they surged against each other. </p><p>Still trembling with it, Dani pulled Grace up to kiss her, licked messily into her mouth, and between one breath and the next whispered, “I love you.”</p><p>*</p><p>Less than a day later, she said it again before she sliced open Grace’s middle for her reactor. </p><p>Grace had never experienced joy so fierce as that moment. “I love you. I’ll see you soon.”</p><p>*</p><p>“I volunteer for the augmentations. I volunteer.”</p><p>“Grace, the risks—”</p><p>“I know the risks, and I volunteer.”</p><p>*</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for the kind feedback to part one of this fic! Your comments were very much appreciated and enjoyed. &lt;3</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>*</p><p>“You’re in love with her.” Dani raked a hand through her close-cropped hair and exhaled a short, ugly laugh. “It’s like you want to go back just so you can be with her for three days and die and do it all the fuck over again. No matter what I do—”</p><p>“What are you even talking about?” Recovering from a brutal conditioning session, Grace could barely lift her head off the cot. Her augments were integrating well, better than expected. They almost felt like her own body, though the metabolic crash was a killer. </p><p>Her commander wasn’t handling it well. At all. </p><p>“How many times have you died for me?” Dani asked harshly. “Do you even know? Is this all we get—the same twenty years over and over? I don’t accept that—I can’t do it again.” Her dark gaze lifted to Grace’s, full of so much grief and death that Grace flinched. Her mind lurched and rebelled at the idea even as it settled in. </p><p>Her dreams had only gotten more intense lately. They felt so real sometimes she ached. They felt like memories. “That’s not possible,” she said carefully.</p><p>“Which part?” Dani snapped. “That we’ve done this loop so many times we’re starting to remember it, or that you love her and not me?”</p><p>Grace needed to be sitting up for this. Rolling onto her side, she pushed herself carefully upright and swung her legs over the side of the cot. “What are you asking me, really,” she said, utterly unable to answer Dani’s questions as stated. Her knuckles whitened against her pants as Dani dropped down in front of her, both knees hitting the ground almost in supplication. It felt so wrong, she wanted to look away. Her commander should never kneel for her. </p><p>Dani covered Grace’s hands with her own. They were dark with dust and grease, rough and chapped, the kindest and strongest hands she had known in more than ten years. “I’m asking you to remember. Grace. I’m her. You saved me… God knows how many times now. Soon you’re going to travel back to 2022 and do it again. And you’re going to die there. Tell me you remember.”</p><p>“I—” Grace shook her head. “I don’t know.”</p><p> “We try so hard to keep that EMP safe.” Rage and frustration flashed through her eyes. “But it’s always fucked, and I can never save you in th end. And the next time I see you, you’re a child, and you don’t know me.”</p><p>“I know you better than anyone,” Grace corrected, frowning. It felt like she’d known Dani better and longer than any of her own family.</p><p>“But you’re in love with her,” Dani looked down at their joined hands. “I know. I remember.”</p><p>Grace had never been able to lie to her. She swallowed thickly. “I have these—these dreams.” The words felt dragged up from her middle. “They’re so real.”</p><p>“That’s because they were.” Dani rubbed Grace’s knuckles with her thumbs. “You’re going to leave again to go to her, and there’s nothing I can do to stop you. You won’t let anyone else go.” Her voice had thickened, too, and tears glinted in her eyes.</p><p>“Legion tries to take you out in the past?” Grace didn’t quite say it as a question. It made sense. It all felt very familiar.</p><p>“Yes,” Dani whispered. </p><p>“Then I have to protect you. I have to. You’re too important to the future of the resistance.”</p><p>Dani shook her head. “That’s just it. There’s never going to be a future for us or the resistance if we live in this loop.” She sniffed and rubbed briskly at the wetness in her eyes. Grace could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen the commander almost-cry.</p><p>She turned this new reality over and over. It twisted her mind and apparently her life into a mobius strip, but the heart of it wasn’t difficult to find. “Is that so bad?” Dani snorted, so Grace pressed a little. “Legion doesn’t win. I can keep you safe. If I’m going to repeat the same twenty years, at least I’m saving you.”</p><p>Dani’s smile was so tender, it hurt. “We’re wearing a groove in those twenty years, Grace. My father and my brother die every time. I have to kill you <i>every time</i>. You leave and I have to keep going without you. I’m tired. I don’t want to do it again.”</p><p>“Let’s do something different, then. Something we haven’t tried.” </p><p>Dani laughed harshly, as though there couldn’t possibly be anything left. And fuck that. Grace had a lousy track record of backing down when anybody told her to—even her commander, if her commander was too stubborn to see a better path. </p><p>She’d bet her favorite rifle they hadn’t tried this. </p><p>She touched Dani’s shoulder—her only warning—fisted her hand in the front of her shirt, and pulled her up. She crashed her mouth clumsily against Dani’s, hard enough that her lower lip pinched and bled against her teeth. Her heart pounded at the impulsiveness of her action, as well as the realization that she had no plan beyond this. Foresight had never been her forte, and she was still so lightheaded from the metabolic crash that she would’ve toppled over if they’d been standing. </p><p>Dani made a rough sound of surprise that vibrated against Grace’s mouth, but her shock didn’t last. She got her feet under her and pushed upright, tipping Grace back so she had to brace against the cot. And that was the end of the kiss.</p><p>Dani wiped her mouth. “What good did that do?” she bit out.</p><p>Grace was flushed all over, her skin blotchy beneath her tac vest. The crash fever likely covered up her embarrassment, at least. “Got you off your knees,” she said breathlessly. “Was it the way you remembered?”</p><p>Dani’s face tightened in something between a smile and a grimace. She shook her head. “No. But thank you anyway.”</p><p>Like pretty much everyone still alive and kicking, Grace had a firm grasp of tragedy. Heartbreak, though, that was still relatively fresh by comparison. She’d known for years her commander would never love her the way she did. She’d felt safe in that knowledge—whatever she harbored would stay hidden. Learning that Dani may have but didn’t anymore was somehow worse even than having it all spilled out in the open.</p><p>She forced herself to take a slow breath. It was worse and better, because this was something Grace could still fix. She could protect Dani in the past and the future. “It’s going to work this time,” she said, to herself and to Dani. </p><p>“No. It isn’t.” Dani tugged on her hair and paced restlessly by Grace’s cot. </p><p>“You told me sooner this time around, right? We have more time. You need to stop thinking about how to keep me from going back to protect you, and start thinking how we’re going to win this.”</p><p>Dani’s eyebrows lifted. “Is that what I need to do?”</p><p>Grace kept her gaze up, despite her flush. “Yes. We’ve got more time to plan. We’ve got more time to remember. Who’s trying to kill you in the past? We need to focus on a plan to take them out as quickly as possible.”</p><p>“It’s a Rev-9,” Dani answered flatly. </p><p>Even though her organs had been shifted around to make room for her augmentations, Grace’s stomach could and did still drop. “Shit.”</p><p>*</p><p>On the day she would travel back to 2022, Grace was arranging all the gear she had to leave behind from best to shittiest when Dani came to find her.</p><p>“I want you to have all this,” Grace said without looking up. “Obviously you can do whatever you want with it, but...” She shot a quick glance at Dani. The weapons were her own personal stash, outside the standard-issue kept in the armory. “I’d like to think you’ll keep them and use them. I mean—” She touched her favorite rifle. “We’re going to fix this, so hopefully you won’t ever need them. Still...”</p><p>Dani smiled, sad as ever. “Thank you. I’m honored.”</p><p>Grace looked up at her and somehow found exasperation and fondness, even in the face of what she was about to do. “No need for that—just use them when you need them. And remember me sometimes.”</p><p>“I’m not gonna forget you.” Dani’s smile twisted, and Grace looked away, pressing to her feet. </p><p>“Well, how am I supposed to know what happens when I leave this time? What happens to you? What happens to all of this? Does it change right away because everything I’m about to do I will have done in the past?” Anticipation had brought on the adrenalin rush early, but with no outlet yet—no one to fight—it all came out her mouth. “Or does nothing ever change because it’s a loop?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Dani said with a shrug. “You haven’t left yet.”</p><p>“You don’t remember anything from before? The other times we’ve done this?”</p><p>Dani crossed her arms over her chest and wouldn’t quite meet Grace’s eyes. “I try not to. It’s fuzzy—and sad. Maybe it’s different every time, and that’s why.”</p><p>Now that her gear was in order, Grace stripped out of her fatigues and vest. She couldn’t take them with her, and someone could use them here. Not Dani, obviously. She felt Dani’s eyes on her, even though they’d seen each other undress countless times, especially in the beginning when Grace couldn’t stand to be alone. Her gaze was heavier now. </p><p>And it wasn’t like there’d be a return trip from this, or any chance for Grace to see this Dani ever again. </p><p>“You said—you said I was in love with her. Or that I am.” She swallowed and met Dani’s eyes. “Were you—I mean, was she?”</p><p>Dani’s brows twitched, and so did the corners of her mouth—sign of a complicated emotion Grace couldn’t quite translate. “It feels like she was a different person. And you were a different person because you already knew me. Our history had already happened in the future.”</p><p>“That’s not an answer.”</p><p>“I know. And yes—she was. You were…” Dani searched her face. “You are the most beautiful, best person I ever knew.”</p><p>Grace pulled on the loose pants she sometimes slept in, when she had the luxury, something to occupy her hands and her body. If she stopped moving, she might never be able to look away from Dani. She might never be able to leave. “Then what changed?” she ask, voice rough.</p><p>Dani shrugged and turned sharply away to pace the width of Grace’s narrow quarters. “Oh, I don’t know,” she bit out. “I ripped out your micro-reactor and watched you die after we’d—been together for that one and only time. And when I found you again—everything was different. Judgment Day had come and gone, and you were just a kid.”</p><p>She turned and regarded Grace with a strange, naked expression. “I almost envy you, going back to when I was—not like this.”</p><p>Grace pinched her lips together, but the words still came tumbling out. “I’ve loved you like this all along.” She took a breath. “You have to know that. And I’m not a kid anymore.”</p><p>That vulnerable expression was replaced by something more familiar. Dani looked away. “I know. But I can’t—I can’t have you and lose you in a day. Not twice in my life. It’s better to keep that in the past. Mine, anyway.”</p><p>Grace hugged one arm across her middle to clasp her opposite elbow rather than reach for her commander. “I’m gonna get it right this time. For both of us. You’ll see.”</p><p>Dani exhaled an unsteady sound. “Hopefully, I won’t.”</p><p>*</p><p>Grace should’ve gone for it right there in the factory, when Dani’s brother dropped an engine block on the Rev-9. That was the moment—she should’ve gone for it. With her body roaring, Grace could have ended it right there.</p><p>But she didn’t because—because her body also told her it wasn’t time yet. She hadn’t had enough time. There was <i>never enough time</i>. So she grabbed Dani’s hand, and they ran like they’d done so many times before. Grace could feel it now, the groove of this path, worn deep into her memory.</p><p>Into Dani’s too. The three of them were piled into the pickup truck, Diego against the window, when Dani looked up at her with eyes Grace knew <i>so</i> well. “Why do I feel like I know you?” she asked.</p><p>Grace stomped on the gas because that’s what she was supposed to do. “You know me better probably than anyone,” she answered, because fuck it. Dani’s mind was already reaching for their history, and this was the last time they were going to do this.</p><p>And there was no time.</p><p>“How?”</p><p>Grace risked a glance over at her as they lurched forward out of the parking lot. This truck was a piece of shit—why did she always pick this truck? “That machine is here to kill you. I’m here to keep you safe. The rest will come back to you pretty quick.”</p><p>Dani’s eyes narrowed, and as they swung around a corner, her hand shot out to clamp over Grace’s thigh. She rocked solidly against Grace’s shoulder and kept her hand there to steady herself. Squeezed in the middle of the bench seat, Dani straddled the gearshift. Reaching between her legs to take hold of it sent a wild feeling up Grace’s spine. As they hit the highway, she kept her eyes on the road.</p><p>*</p><p>Miracle of fucking miracles, she managed to keep all three of them alive, even with steel rebar flying through the air and cars crashing. Dani helped. She hung onto her brother like she knew if she let go, he’d get skewered or run over or shot or worse. </p><p>“If I tell the two of you to run, you run,” Grace said, backing them up against the highway guardrail. She should have taken out the Rev-9 when she had the chance. When she had thirty seconds to string together what she needed to do. Now she had both of its component parts stalking toward her and no way to—</p><p>The red truck shot out from nowhere across the lane, rammed the Rev-9’s skeleton twenty feet, and screeched to a halt a few yards away.</p><p>“Oh, thank god,” Grace exhaled as Sarah Connor stepped out of the vehicle and started blasting away at the 9’s nanotech body. “Take this.” Grace handed her piece of rebar to Dani. </p><p>“What?”</p><p>“If I tell you to run, you run. Understand?” </p><p>“We’re not going anywhere without you,” Dani said with the kind of stubbornness she had obviously been cultivating long before this. </p><p>“Then at least turn away.” Grace flicked open the pocketknife from the jeans she’d lifted off one of the kids who’d picked her up the night she fell through time. </p><p>Shot to a pulp, the 9 flipped backward over the guardrail, and a few seconds later, Sarah blew its skeleton another fifty feet back into an SUV windshield with a goddamn rocket launcher. </p><p>“Holy shit,” Diego said.</p><p>“What the hell are you doing?” Dani asked sharply, clamping her hand around Grace’s wrist. She looked up with sick dread, visions of a future-past haunting her. They’d done a version of this before. Dani had described it. “Grace, what are you doing?”</p><p>She twisted her hand free. “I’m saving you.” She slid the knife across the synthetic skin of her right side, and even though the blade wasn’t as sharp as she’d hoped, it did the job. The surgical scar had barely healed, much fresher than the faded ones running along the rest of her body.</p><p>Sarah Connor stepped even with them and glanced down at the 9’s nano components struggling to re-form below. She tossed a grenade down, and after the detonation rocked the ground under their feet, shot them an unreadable look behind her sunglasses. “I’ll be back,” she said.</p><p>“No, wait,” Grace gasped as she slid her fingers into her abdominal cavity.</p><p>“Grace!” Dani’s hands hovered, like she wanted to but couldn’t bear to touch her right now.</p><p>“What the fuck?” Sarah’s nose wrinkled. “What are you?”</p><p>Her fingers found her micro-reactor—and shifted to the device bracketed against it. </p><p>“I think I’m gonna throw up,” Diego said in Spanish and hunched forward over his knees. </p><p>When she’d fished it free, she held it out to Sarah. “Hold this. I’m gonna go get that.” She pointed at the 9’s skeleton punched into the windshield down the road. </p><p>“What is this?” Sarah held it in her open palm and glared between Grace and Dani. “And do I know you two?”</p><p>“Yes,” Grace answered.</p><p>“No,” Dani said. “Wait, here—you’re bleeding.” Dropping the rebar, she stripped out of her stained factory shirt and pressed it firmly to Grace’s abdomen. </p><p>“It’s not really blood,” Grace said distractedly, covering Dani’s hand with her own and blinking for a moment at their fingers slotted together. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”</p><p>Adrenalin still singing, Grace jogged to where Sarah had blasted the 9’s skeleton, and with a grunt, hauled it down off the hood of the car. Its systems were still recovering, so she dragged it back with little trouble. </p><p>“This is insane,” Dani said to anyone who would listen. She pressed the shirt tighter to Grace’s front for her as she hoisted the skeleton over the guardrail and watched it fall into the blaze below. The flames had already begun to die down. “You need a hospital.”</p><p>“I’m fine,” Grace bit out. To Sarah she said, “Come with me.”</p><p>“Take this thing—it’s wet,” Sarah replied, her lip curling as she held out the device. </p><p>Wordlessly, Grace took it back, and Sarah looked relieved to have two hands on her shotgun again. Turning to Dani, Grace put a hand on her shoulder. “You stay up here. No matter what happens, stay here.”</p><p>She nodded, her eyes darting quickly over Grace’s body and her face. “You’re pretty bossy, you know. I thought I was supposed to run.” Her mouth twitched into something like a smile when she looked up.</p><p>Because she didn’t know how many times they’d lived this loop, she didn’t know how many days she’d had with this Dani, but it had been enough. “You have no idea,” she said. Her commander had been right—Grace was in love.</p><p>Impulsively, she touched the ends of Dani’s hair, winding a piece of it around her first two fingers. “You still might have to run. But right now—stay.” She rubbed her thumb over the texture of it—it was so much softer than she expected, with no grit or harsh soap to roughen it.</p><p>“All right,” Dani said. “Just come back.”</p><p>“I’ll do my best.” With a nod to Sarah, she vaulted over the guardrail and dropped the twelve or so feet to the ground below. Landing heavily, she clenched Dani’s shirt against her stomach and groaned. The heat of the fire licked against her face, so she backed off a step, ignoring the faint tremble in her limbs. She only had to hold out a little longer.</p><p>“What an idiotic party trick. Jesus. My knees don’t do that anymore. Let’s be real; they never did,” Sarah grumbled as she picked her way down the embankment at a slower pace. </p><p>Grace shaded her eyes from the sun as she squinted into the dying flames. The 9’s nanotech dripped and hissed and pooled on the blackened ground. How would she know if she’d gotten close enough to destroy it? All she needed was to fry its neural net, though, not every piece of it.</p><p>“Hey, what is that thing anyway?”</p><p>“It’s a Rev-9.”</p><p>“Not the terminator—that thing in your hand.”</p><p>Grace turned to glance at her, and from the corner of her eye, caught Dani leaning over the guardrail watching them. “It’s a close-range EMP.”</p><p>“How close do you have to be to detonate it?”</p><p>“Pretty close. Cover me.”</p><p>Sarah circled to the right slightly, shotgun lifted, as Grace edged closer. The EMP was directional, a precision device designed to take out the neural net of the machine and nothing else. Nothing of hers. But the Rev-9 was a little too spread out right now for her comfort. </p><p>As she debated how to get close enough to it on a flaming farm cart, the blaze of its machine eyes hooked her attention. The skeleton pulled itself upright, grotesque and disjointed, and with a shout, Grace leapt at it. It grabbed onto her, its grip barely heated by the fire. The flames licked at her skin, though, and singed her clothes. </p><p>“Want me to shoot it?” Sarah shouted.</p><p>“No!” But no sooner had she spoken than fire seemed to <i>swarm</i> up her legs, the nano components tearing apart the legs of her jeans and what felt like her flesh besides.</p><p>“Grace!” </p><p>Dani’s voice carried to her through the screaming she realized was coming from her own throat. She grappled one-armed with the 9, trying to position the device with the other before it devoured her. She was vulnerable to both. Fuck, she hadn’t trained for the machine to be in separate pieces when she did this. But she had trained for this. </p><p>“Let me shoot it!” Sarah called, and didn’t wait for permission. The percussive blast of the shotgun roared in Grace’s ears and knocked the 9’s head sideways, exposing its aural cavity. Grace slapped the device over the tiny hole and detonated it before she could second-guess herself. </p><p>Not that she would have had the chance anyway. The magnetic pulse rippled outward, sent sparks shooting up her arm like a lit fuse, and scrambled her vision. She dropped onto the burning cart like a puppet with cut strings, her lungs struggling against the enhanced weight of her own skeleton, unassisted. Static filled her ears the moment before all sound cut out completely.</p><p>Her thought as she lay there twitching was to wonder if this had been enough to break the loop. Would Dani look for her in the future after Judgment Day? Would Dani pull her out of the rubble and take her in, even though they’d only known each other here a couple hours? Or had Grace finally set her free?</p><p>She’d hoped for something different. Hoped for a better future. But maybe she’d secured it with what she’d done already. Dani had her brother with her, and Sarah. Maybe she’d had enough time, after all.</p><p>*</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Jeez, sorry for the delay. What a momentum killer, eh. Things got weird this week--turns out working from home on your personal laptop doesn't exactly lend itself to wanting to spend MORE time writing fic on said laptop--and I wasn't happy with this last chapter, so it took a while to poke it into the shape I wanted. Anyway, I hope you liked this story! Dark Fate gave me so many feelings! I don't know if I've gotten them all out, but this is a good start, haha. Thank you again for all the wonderful feedback!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>*</p><p>For so long her dreams had been these intense, vivid… sensory experiences. She would awaken from them remembering the exact texture of Dani’s skin, Dani’s weight in her arms, the feel of Dani’s breath on her lips. The wild thump of her heart under Grace’s hand. The sour taste of fear on her mouth. </p><p>She’d awaken knowing exactly how it felt to love someone she’d never known, because her commander had never touched her that way. Breathed with her that way. Moved with her.</p><p>This was—not like those dreams. If they’d ever been dreams. If she was even dreaming now.</p><p>She hadn’t been this alone since her parents had died, since those months before Dani found her. Stumbling through this absense of civilization felt too familiar.</p><p>“Dani!” she called, or tried to. “Dani…” Her voice hardly carried past her lips. She tried to run, but her feet wouldn’t obey. She moved as if through deep sand.</p><p>Maybe she was dead. What had brought her here remained shrouded in fog. She could no more go back to it than she could travel back in time. </p><p>Only—she’d done that, hadn’t she. Her body understood that fact deeply. She’d gone back in time, but had she succeeded?</p><p>Maybe she was dead, and this was her afterlife, her consciousness a ghost in the still functioning components of her enhancements. Fuck, how long would that last? The technology was new enough, and life was shitty enough, no one knew when her augmentations would degrade. The fragile human parts always went first, so it wasn’t like anyone could get answers. She could be stuck here awake and alone for years.</p><p>Historically, Grace didn’t do so well on her own. </p><p>Closing her eyes, she accessed as many memories of Dani as she could and followed them to their ends. She wrapped herself in their sense-data, curled inward, and waited.</p><p>*</p><p>There hadn’t been much point in augmenting her sense of smell, so it was her fully human nose, pressed against fabric that smelled of old sweat and cheap detergent that eventually pulled her out from the fog of wherever she’d been. Curled on her side, her instincts told her she lay on a bed. Her nose told her it was a shitty hotel bed. </p><p>There was very little other data for her to process besides this—it was dark, and she wasn’t dying.</p><p>“Dani?” she croaked and rolled onto her back.</p><p>“I’m here. Grace, I’m here.” She spoke in a muffled, distant voice. Or—no, it was Grace’s ears that were muffled. She blinked, but the darkness of the room wouldn’t resolve into focus. Also, her right arm had flopped awkwardly across the bed and wouldn’t move.</p><p>“<i>Dani</i>.” Panic seized her, and she shoved upright as the isolation of the dream receded and the recent past returned in a rush. How long had she been out? How long had they waited for her? Fifteen years of running and fighting and running had conditioned her. They <i>needed</i> to move.</p><p>“Easy—don’t move, okay? You’re safe. We’re safe.” Blunt pressure on her right shoulder and on her face jolted her. She still couldn’t see more than blurred shapes. Then cool fingers pressed on the left side of her face, and the detail of it—the flood of sensory input—left Grace gasping in relief. She clasped Dani’s wrist in a tight grip, and if her other arm weren’t fucked, she’d have pulled her into a hug.</p><p>“What’s happening? Is it dead? Did it work?”</p><p>Dani exhaled a short laugh. She tipped her head gently against Grace’s for a moment and said voice low, “Yes, it’s gone. You did it. Sarah is carrying the head around like a trophy until she can melt it, she said.”</p><p>Grace echoed her laugh, and the sound of it startled her, rusty and so rarely used.</p><p>“How do you feel?” Dani asked. Her fingers trailed from Grace’s jaw to her throat and down to her shoulder. “You’ve been asleep for almost forty-eight hours.”</p><p>Grace shifted on the bed and winced as the springs creaked. “I—I’m malfunctioning. Is there a light? Can—”</p><p>“My brother’s sleeping. Come with me to the bathroom, okay?”</p><p>Which led Grace to the reassuring knowledge that she at least had no trouble walking, though her right arm hung limp at her side. Dani kept a good grip on her as they lurched to the bathroom and shut themselves inside. When she flipped the light switch, Grace blinked at their reflection in the mirror and leaned closer to examine herself. </p><p>She took as careful stock as she could with the use of only her left eye. The right picked up the brightness of the room, but she couldn’t focus it.</p><p>“You said earlier—the EMP fried some of your enhancements.” Dani shifted behind her and snapped her fingers by Grace’s right ear. She only knew this from Dani’s reflection in the mirror—she couldn’t hear a thing.</p><p>“When did I say that?” Grace turned to get Dani squarely in view of her good eye. There were angry red patches on her forearms, and her lip was split. “And when did these happen?” She reached for Dani’s wrist and held it up to the light over the sink. “Are these burns?”</p><p>“We had to pull you off that cart,” she said quietly. “You were—” She shuddered. “You said you were crashing, and you needed meds. You were out of it, but Sarah got what you needed.”</p><p>Grace touched Dani’s lip. “Did I do this to you?”</p><p>She nodded and reached up to fold Grace’s hand into her own. “It wasn’t your fault.”</p><p>“I’m sorry.” Her purpose had been to protect Dani above all else. Hurting her even this much rubbed the wrong way against every cell and circuit in her body.</p><p>“You saved my life, all our lives. You were amazing.” Dani looked up at her, expression young and full of emotion. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” </p><p>Where Grace had come from, Dani was about ten years older than her. Here, she was ten years younger. There hadn’t been time until now to really feel that. Here, Dani had so much in front of her. </p><p>Grace had served her purpose. Without a right arm, eye, or ear, what more could she possibly offer? Tugging her hand free from Dani’s, her abdomen pulled strangely. With a jolt she remembered the hole she’d cut into herself and lifted her shirt to see her flesh neatly stitched back together.</p><p>“Sarah did that too,” Dani said. “She’s handy to have around. Grumpy, though.”</p><p>The stitches were slathered in thick ointment, as were the burns on her own skin, though Grace was at no risk of infection. “Where is she?”</p><p>“Keeping watch, supposedly. And drinking.”</p><p>Grace huffed. “Wonderful.”</p><p>“Do you—do we know her? I feel like…”</p><p>Grace straightened her t-shirt—it was clean and new. She regarded Dani with a divided heart. How much should she say? Should she try to be as small an interruption as possible in Dani’s life now that this threat had been eliminated?</p><p>“She said there might be another of those things—a terminator,” Dani said, as if in answer to Grace’s questions. “She said there could be another one tomorrow. Grace, my father is dead, and she says I can’t go home. You have to tell me everything—I have to know what’s going on.”</p><p>Grace nodded, already exhausted by the prospect. Exhausted and decided. She would need to work with Sarah on the dosage of her meds, because she should not be this tired. Not when she still had the only job she’d ever been good at to do. </p><p>Carefully, she lowered herself to the closed toilet seat. Dani stayed close, perching on the edge of the bathtub. It felt a little like the old days, twenty years from now, when Dani needed some quiet and Grace’s honesty, when they put their heads together to set them both straight.</p><p>So, Grace sat forward over her knees and told Dani everything.</p><p>*</p><p>She kept her dead arm tucked against her side with a hand in her jacket pocket. When the path permitted, Dani hooked her hand through her elbow and walked beside her, volunteering to be her right hand, ear, and eye as they hiked through the nighttime desert to the US border. </p><p>Their hips bumped together sometimes, and Grace couldn’t pretend they were anywhere else or doing anything else. She’d never been to college or dated a girl or had even a park to walk in for close to fifteen years, so this couldn’t be any of those things. They were hiking to the US border to find this guy future-Dani had told her to go to for help if she needed it. He was a terminator with a conscience, apparently. Of more interest to Grace was the possibility he could help fix the augmented parts of her that had failed.</p><p>She’d never been to college or dated a girl or walked arm-in-arm through a park with her sweetheart, but she knew a love story when it took her by the hand. She knew it in the way Dani looked at her, so like and <i>so</i> different from her commander. </p><p>With Sarah’s gruff watchfulness and Diego’s constant worry, they had precious little time alone, but before they’d set out for the border, in a few quiet moments stolen in the hotel room while Grace was supposed to rest and recover, Dani had lain beside her on that saggy mattress, curled on her side so their knees touched.</p><p>They’d watched each other in the yellow glow of the sun through the curtains, the sounds of the world outside distant and insignificant. Dani had touched her face, spread her fingers across Grace’s cheek, and whispered, “I feel this… something pressing on me from the inside, trying to get out.”</p><p>“What do you think it is?” Grace had murmured.</p><p>“I think it’s knowing. I’m supposed to know something.” Dani had hesitated for a long moment, her gaze twitching between Grace’s mouth and her eyes. Then she slid closer and touched her mouth to Grace’s, tentative and soft. “I think I know what it is,” she’d whispered against Grace’s lips.</p><p>“Yes,” Grace had said as Dani carefully rolled to kneel over her, pressed her good arm up beneath the pillow and shared her breath, their mouths just barely touching.</p><p>“Do you?” Dani had asked.</p><p>“It feels like I’ve known for lifetimes,” she answered. Tears had pricked her eyes.  Grace would have grabbed onto Dani if she could have. Instead she’d bent one leg up between Dani’s to press between her thighs. Dani had exhaled against her mouth.</p><p>“We’re going to go find this guy, Karl, and he’s going to help you.”</p><p>“Yes.” He was also going to keep Dani safe while Grace was compromised. </p><p>“Then we’re going to take out Legion and stop Judgment Day before it ever happens.”</p><p>“Yes,” Grace had said as she leaned up to kiss her. Dani’s hips settled back against Grace’s leg and rocked downward. She’d felt Dani’s heartbeat where their bodies touched, and it was accelerating. “I’m going to keep you safe,” she’d said. The promise she would always keep.</p><p>They’d heard Sarah and Diego grumping at each other outside the door, and Dani had slid off her. She’d kept their fingers interlaced across Grace’s stomach, though, and no one had said a word about it.</p><p>So they walked together, even though Grace didn’t need the help. They walked together because this was a love story. They made their way north to a train that would take them close enough to the border that Dani’s uncle could get them the rest of the way. They faced the future head-on.</p><p>They kept moving.</p><p>End</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Come say hi on <a href="https://itstartledme.tumblr.com/">tumblr!</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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